A2Z: Zelda Style!
by DeadeyeDave
Summary: New on VH1 (Videogame Hyrule...umm...One, I guess) it's A2Z: Zelda Style, where we go through the alphabet analyzing our favorite Zelda characters. Now: The second half of the alphabet, the rare sequel that's better than the first!
1. Link, A through M

A2Z: Zelda Style!

Zelda characters. They're complicated, inscrutable, and frequently dangerous to themselves and others. Mostly, though, they're complicated. Like, so complicated that you could assign one of their traits to each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, then explain them in a wildly popular VH1 special. But we'd never stoop to that level.

On a totally unrelated note, welcome to A2Z: Zelda Style, in which we will examine one of the multi-layered, dynamic, and I daresay COMPLICATED Zelda characters using a certain system of pictograms representing sounds that might be familiar to you.

Anyhoo, our subject of the day is Link. After saving the world of Hyrule for what must be at LEAST the fifteenth time, he went downhill rapidly and hit the inhalants pretty hard.

(cut to: Shot of Link, sitting on velvet chair in a Playboy bathrobe, smoking bubble pipe)

"Not that I remember," he says.

But you wouldn't, of course!

So he's our first subject. Now, meet the experts who know him best!

Zelda! Ganondorf! Malon! Saria! Ruto! Rauru! Darunia! Impa! Nabooru! And Skull Kid!

So let's begin!

A IS FOR….

All of the members turned towards each other, nodded, and said in unison, "Attention deficit disorder."

"Well, the 'a' would be for 'attention' but as long as you keep the 'deficit disorder' part there, that sums it up pretty well," Zelda remarked.

"Sums up what?" Malon queried.

"Well, everything. Link in general can be summarized with the words 'attention deficit disorder,'" Zelda returned.

"Like, if we were to beam messages into space to tell extraterrestrial life forms the essence of Link's existence as a human being, we would say, 'a decided deficit of attention,'" Ganondorf opined.

"It was like living with a combination of a toddler, a butterfly, and a PCP addict growing up with him," Saria reminisced. "I built half of a Pine-Wood Derby racer with him before he ate one of the wheels and decided he was obsessed with astrology. Then he spent the next four minutes telling me I would make advancements in my career today, but would be vulnerable to assertive Scorpios. When I reminded him I didn't have a career, he responded that he didn't care about astrology, but had been researching frogs for the past fourteen seconds."

"No dispute there. Next!" said Darunia.

B IS FOR…

"Hmm..." mused Ruto. "Biceps?"

"Umm...well, he HAS biceps, in the same sense a raccoon has biceps. So do you. What's your point?" asked Zelda.

"They're SOOO HOOOT?"

"You're going to be sooooo unconscious in about five minutes."

"Sorry."

"So what's B for?" Impa asked.

"How about...blondie?" said Nabooru.

"Blond. Yeah, he is," said Darunia.

"More than that, though, he ACTS blond," Nabooru continued.

"Right. And not in the attractive David Beckham way, but in the Dan Quayle way."

"Every blond joke you could think of applies to him."

"Yeah," Zelda mused, "Once he literally was stuck for hours on an escalator."

"Once," said Saria, "when he was real young, he couldn't find his green cap until I reminded him that he was wearing it."

"So yeah, B is for dumb blonde."

"NEXT!"

C IS FOR...

"Hm. Hard one."

"OHOHOH! I KNOW!" piped up the Skull Kid.

"Whatever it is, odds are you don't know it."

"NO! I REALLY KNOW THIS TIME! THE ANSWER IS..."

"YES?" everyone asked breathlessly.

"CATS!" the Skull Kid shouted, with a self-content smile.

"Cats? What on earth do cats have to do with him?" asked Ruto incredulously.

"HE HATES CATS! HE REALLY REALLY DOES!" Skull Kid insisted.

"What makes you think that?" Saria asked.

"THIS ONE TIME? IN THE LOST WOODS? I WAS GETTING READY TO CLEAN AND POLISH MY HEAD WHEN LINK CAME IN AND HE WAS RUNNING FROM SOMETHING!"

"And it was a cat?" Impa inferred.

"NO, ACTUALLY, IT WAS A PARAKEET, BUT THAT'S A STORY FOR LATER. BUT THEN HE RAN IN FRONT OF ME AND I YELLED 'CATS!' AT HIM!"

"Why did you do THAT?" Darunia wanted to know.

"THOUGHT IT'D BE FUNNY! ANYWAY AS SOON AS I SAID IT HE CLUTCHED HIS HEAD AND SHRIEKED LIKE A GIRL AND FELL TO THE GROUND AND CURLED INTO THE FETAL POSITION AND WEPT FOR DAYS. TRUE STORY."

"Well. C is for cats, indeed."

"Although I would have rather preferred I never knew about this sorry chapter in his life."

"NEXT!"

D IS FOR...

"Well," Zelda said, "I think that it's got to be for 'dungeons.'"

Saria raised her eyebrows.

"All the time – all the time – he complains about how much he hates dungeons. They're dark, dank, dangerous, deadly and disastrous."

"Don't forget dastardly," added G-dorf helpfully.

"And diabolical," continued Ruto thoughtfully.

"And...DARUNIA!" shouted Darunia, displaying the kind of brainpower rarely seen outside the lower ruminants.

A profound silence followed.

"And DONUTS!" shouted Rauru, as if in response to an idiocy challenge.

A silence profounder still followed. Everyone shifted uncomfortably in his/her seat. Rauru and Darunia, however, were grinning like the Cheshire cat.

"Well," said Nabooru hesitantly, "no. Those things have nothing to do with dungeons. But that doesn't make it untrue that dungeons are an important part of Link's life."

"True," went on Impa. "He spends most of his waking hours in them."

"Ya know," Ruto mused, "I wonder if Link has any steady job outside of looting dungeons. I mean, it pays the bills, but..."

"Yeah," wondered Ganondorf, "what DOES he do outside of monster-killing?"

"I hired him to paint my castle one summer," Zelda reminisced, then shuddered violently. "If what my castle looks like NOW is any indication, I'd say Link has no job outside of heroism."

"Funny that the Hero of Time needs the job so badly."

"Yeah."

E IS FOR...

"Epona, no doubt," said Malon proudly.

"Naah, that's too easy. How about..."

"Evil?" suggested Ganondorf.

"Well, I guess. You would know."

"Damn straight I would. Anyway, like we were saying, without evil Link would be out of a job. It was MY evil that got him off his lazy butt and out into the world, slaying monsters, solving puzzles, collecting artifacts, stabbing me to death and then...umm...anyway, it's all thanks to evil. If it wasn't for me he'd be still sitting in Kokiri Forest eating Pine-Wood Derby car wheels. Me! ME!" Ganondorf raved helplessly.

"Once again an attempt at conversation has turned, pathetically, into desperate self-aggrandizement," Ruto remarked astutely.

"But it drives home the point, which is that Link's career is pretty darn weird."

"Yeah. And if you look, evil always has something to do with it."

"Well, let's see," Rauru rambled, while inside his mind monkeys with typewriters tapped tentatively on the keys. "Oh yeah!" he ejaculated, the monkeys accidentally typing _Hamlet_, Act I, Scene III. "He was in The Legend of Zelda, and he saved Zelda from evil, and then he was in Link's Adventure, where he saved Zelda from evil. And then there was A Link to the Past, where he saved Zelda from evil."

"Damn, girl," Malon remarked, "You get saved so often the hard disc is full."

There was an awkward silence.

"Anyhoo, in Link's Awakening, Link didn't save Zelda, but there was evil. And then there was Ocarina of Time, saving Zelda from evil, Majora's Mask, saving the world from evil, namely YOU," Rauru continued.

"HEY! INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT!" Skull Kid shrieked.

"And finally the Wind Waker, back to the good ol' saving Zelda from evil."

"So you'll note," Ganondorf added, "That evil was a central element of all those games."

"Yeah, and so was rescuing the hottie," Darunia added. "Yeah, 'rescuing' that BOO-TAY! WOO!"

"Um, I'm right over here," Zelda responded, rolling her eyes into next week.

There was yet another awkward silence. These happen a lot, don't they?

"The point remains: E is for evil."

"Agreed."

"YES!" shouted Ganondorf, getting out a notepad and a pen. "A POINT FOR ME! HA HA HA, MY IDEAS ARE SIGNIFICANT!"

Again with the awkward silence.

F IS FOR...

"Hmm."

"That's a tough one."

"Lets see. Maybe...fish?" Rauru postulated.

"Fish?"

"FISH? WHERE? WHAT KIND AND HOW WELL COOKED?" Rauru gibbered, drooling.

"No. You suggested 'fish' as being what F is for."

"No, I was saying what I wanted for lunch."

"Oh. Thanks for clearing THAT up."

"Well, fish could work," Malon said.

"In what sense?"

"Well, Ruto over here is pretty fishy, and...you know..."

"We prefer the term 'ichthyoids,'" Ruto clarified indignantly.

"I prefer chunky peanut butter, but I don't get it, do I?" Darunia said nonsensically, as he does so very well.

"Anyway. If I recall, Link also used a fish to get into Jabu-Jabu, who himself is a giant fish."

"Okay, fine. Fish it is."

G IS FOR...

"Hum. Grape-Nuts," Rauru offered.

"What is with you and food-related suggestions?"

"It's lunchtime."

"It's three in the afternoon."

"I see time as nonlinear, with no past, present, or future, and all as one. Therefore, it's ALWAYS lunchtime. And breakfast time, and dinnertime, and teatime, and snack time, and..."

"Hate to interrupt your litany of meals," Nabooru said, "but I think G is for...hmm."

"Well, THAT was eloquent."

"Silence."

"How about grass?"

"Umm, in what sense?"

"His clothes are the color of grass..."

"Naah."

"How about girls?" offered Ganondorf.

"Huh?"

"You know, girls. Like I'm not," added El Dorf-o helpfully.

"Really? Coulda fooled m..."

"Shut up."

"Well, girls would fit pretty well."

"That's true. People think he's had sex with every female character from every game he's been in."

"Where did you hear THAT?"

"Oh...you know...places..."

"Anyway, people think he's a player."

"So G is for girls girls girls."

"Or maybe more like girls girls girls girls girls girls...boys..."

"Eww."

H IS FOR...

"Hero! As in Hero of Time!"

"Yeah, that's true, but...well...let's think of something more original."

"How about...hardship?"

"Hardships? Yeah, I guess Link's life is full of obstacles."

"It consists of nothing BUT obstacles, if I'm not mistaken."

"Well, in the part of it that we see. In the games."

"BUT THEN AGAIN," said the Skull Kid, "WHAT IS ALL OF LIFE BUT AN ENDLESS SERIES OF HARDSHIPS, EACH A TEST AS WE MANEUVER THE TANGLED RIVER OF LIFE?"

"Wow, Skull Kid, deep."

"I WAS DUE."

"So, yeah, H for hardships. Lots of them."

I IS FOR...

"I..." mused Saria.

"You what?" Nabooru shot back.

"No, I."

"You WHAT? What about you?"

"Nothing! We're talking about I!"

"No we're not! We're not talking about you!"

"Yes! I know! I didn't say we were!"

"Yes you did! You said we were talking about you!"

"No! We're talking about I!"

"That is, you!"

"No, I!"

"Wait, who?"

"On first?"

"I think we have strayed far from the original point. We're doing the LETTER I..."

"YOU WHAT? WHAT ABOUT YOU?" Nabooru ranted, just not getting it. "WHY IS EVERYONE BEING SO EGOCENTRIC? IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT YOU!"

"I IS FOR ICE CREAM!" Rauru shouted above the confusion.

Silence fell across the group abruptly.

"Rauru: kills conversations dead," said Impa wryly.

"His favorite flavor is butterscotch," Rauru added, a self-satisfied smile on his face.

"Odd, I'd expect him to like a manly, plain flavor, like chocolate."

"Or that green mint chip stuff."

"I think a better question is, how did Rauru find out Link's favorite ice cream flavor?" asked Malon.

"I know EVERYTHING about people and desserts, Miss Sneak Downstairs At Two A.M. And Eat A Whole Half-Pint Of Rocky Road Straight From The Box In Her Underwear!" Rauru retorted, giving as usual too much information. Malon flushed red.

"Ooo, sexy," Darunia said. "Next time do it in the maid outfi..."

"Shut it, Rocky," the farm gal replied.

"Malon, do you have some dietary problems you'd like to talk about?" Ganondorf said patronizingly.

"Hey, I'm not the one on trail here!" Malon retorted, turning redder.

"Whatever you say, chubby," Ruto cruelly jibed.

"Stop it! It was just that one time!"

"That's what I said to myself, too," Rauru said sadly, slowly shaking his head.

"NO! STOP! YOU'RE CREEPING ME OUT!" Malon shrieked, quivering.

"THERE'S NO ESCAPE, TUBS! GIVE IN TO THE BINGING!" Skull Kid joined in.

"WAAAAAAAH!" Malon burst into tears, dashed offstage to a mini-fridge backstage, and returned with a tub of rocky road and a spoon. "OH, WHENEVER I'M UPSET I EAT!" she sobbed, tucking in with relish and getting chocolate smears all over her cheeks.

"This is truly disturbing."

"Let's move on."

J IS FOR...

"Jugs," Darunia offered.

"Dude, what the fufff. You're being such a perv."

"No, no, no, the jugs that he always would smash with his sword, or pick up and throw on the ground. Y'know those?"

"Oh yeah, the brown clay ones? He'd smash every one he saw."

"I think it was because sometimes there were hearts or bombs or Rupees inside them."

"So...you're saying he was a destructive kleptomaniac when it came to jugs?"

"Well, yeah. But it was sort of a compulsion with him. I mean, I saw him smashing jugs he knew were empty, just to watch them break."

"So, we'll say J is for Link's deep-seated, psychotic obsession with the theft and destruction of jugs," Zelda confirmed.

"Yeah, and he liked seein' 'em on that Zelda slut!" said Darunia, amazing everyone with his seemingly bottomless capacity for being a moronic ass. "I mean, that cheap slut was all, 'Oooo, lookie my boobs!' and that man-ho Link was all, 'Damn, girl, you got a nice rack 'a melons!'"

There was an awkward pause for the umpteenth time.

"Dude, I'm sitting right here," Zelda fumed.

"Don't give me yo sass, skank-ass bitch!" Darunia shot back.

"That's it, punk, you gettin' the chair!" Zelda picked up her studio chair and tried to attack Darunia, while Ganondorf tried in vain to break them up. Burly stagehands grappled the enraged talk-show guests while streams of censored expletives poured from their mouths. The crowd started chanting, "GAN-NY! GAN-NY! GAN-NY!"

K IS FOR…

"Killing," Zelda said without pause. She was red-faced and breathing heavily.

"Oh, come on, Darunia was just being stupid," Saria tried to intervene.

"No, not killing him…as much as we would all love to…" she muttered to herself.

"So killing what, then?"

"Um, EVERYTHING?" Ganondorf answered.

"It's true. Like, everything that wasn't a townsfolk, he stabbed to death. The monsters, the boulders, the shrubs, the Cucoos..."

Ganondorf placed his face in his hands. "Goddesses…you have no idea how hard it is…"

"What?" queried Malon, spraying everything within a two-foot radius with delicious ice cream.

"I had to send twenty platoons of those young, innocent Gerudos to their deaths!" he cried. He held a fist in the air, and shouted to the heavens, "WHY! WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE!"

"Uh, because you're a power-hungry megalomaniac?" Ruto asked.

"IT WAS TERRIBLE! They were in a cave twenty clicks upriver on the Mekong Delta...I TOLD THEM THE BLACK HAWKS WERE ON THEIR WAY! DAMNED CHARLIES! THEY'LL ALL PAY!"

"What ARE you babbling about..."

"IN THE P.O.W. CAMP I HAD TO EAT BOILED MAGGOTS FOR FOURTY DAYS STRAIGHT! I GOT OUT, BUT WITH A METAL PLATE IN MY SKULL!" Ganondorf broke down sobbing.

"Maybe we should move on."

"I CAN'T MOVE ON! I CAN NEVER MOVE ON! SO MUCH DEATH...STAINING MY HANDS..."

"Yeah...moving on would be a good idea..."

Still more awkward silence.

L IS FOR...

"Link?"

"Longshot?"

"Love Is?"

"No. Not that. That has nothing to do with anything."

"How about Lon-Lon Ranch?" Malon opined, moving on to Doritos.

"Malon, it's not ALL about you."

"But I mean, really! He got a bottle from me, he got his horse from me, he got all the free milk he wanted, he could stab my chickens any freakin' time of the day or night, I put a cow in his bedroom..."

"Dude," Impa said, "what the HELL were you thinking?"

"To be honest, I really don't know."

"Who in their right minds would want a cow in their bedroom?"

"Well, I would!" Malon insisted.

The pause that followed was as long as it was awkward.

"I don't even WANT to know why."

M IS FOR...

"Malon!" Malon said.

"WILL YOU SHUT UP?"

"NEVER!" the Skull Kid cried.

"I wasn't TALKING to you!"

"BUT I STILL WON'T, NOT NOW OR EVER!" he cried defiantly. "OH, AND M IS FOR MASKS."

"Really. Why?"

"WELL, THEY'RE IMPORTANT! I MEAN, I WOULD KNOW!"

"Yeah, he would have never lived through Majora's Mask without them. I mean, see the second word in the freakin' title?" Nabooru pointed out.

"And they were useful in OOT, too," Rauru pointed out. "He could make people think he was a girl!" Rauru giggled disturbingly. "Hee hee hee! They thought he was a GIRL!"

"That was really, really strange."

"Okay. But did the masks do anything useful besides giving him cause to question his sexuality?" Darunia wondered.

"Well, the Mask of Truth let him read Gossip Stones."

"Oh, THAT'S helpful."

"Hey, they yielded valuable insights! Like, 'Despite her appearance, Princess Zelda is, in fact, a tomboy.'"

And that, my children, is foreshadowing. You know, Sheik...he's a guy...but he's Zelda in disguise...yeah.

"Hey, who was that?"

"Narrator."

"You stay out of this! This is OUR show, bub!"

N IS FOR...NEXT TIME!


	2. Link, N through Z

A2Z: Zelda Style!

We now continue our alphabetical investigation of that man of mystery, that host with the most, that sheezy off tha heezy, that hero who dresses real queer-o, that, aw screw it, Link. Read on.

**N IS FOR...**

"N, how about neuroses?"

"Yeah, he's neurotic, all right."

"Yeah, there was the cats thing, and the jugs thing, and the green thing..."

"Any others?"

"Well, he loves pecans," said Saria.

"Okay..." said Nabooru.

"I mean, every single year for his birthday, he served pecan pie," she went on.

"Well, I wouldn't call that neurotic. Obsessive? Sure, but who isn't? Eccentric? Yep. But neurotic? Nah."

"…and he stuffs his pillow with them. And he puts them in his underwear." She paused. "I've said too much."

It was too late.

The mouths of the others were like black holes dangling in space.

"…Oh! And every night, he takes a big handful of pecans and..."

"STOP!"

"Truly this is a disturbing universe," remarked Zelda cryptically. "Let us never speak of this again."

"Next...please..."

**O IS FOR…**

"Oh, I know," said Malon.

"What?"

"O is for origami."

"Um, okay..."

"Really! He loves origami! He does it for days at a time!"

"Yeah, I can picture him doing that."

"What does he make?"

"Well, he loves it, but I didn't say he was very good at it. Most of his creations resemble...how to put this...hmm...crumpled pieces of paper?"

"All of them?"

"Well, some of them he puts in his mouth and chews up..."

"Does he realize you use your hands to do origami?"

"We'll never know."

"Next!"

**P IS FOR...**

"Oh, FINALLY," said Rauru. "I was beginning to think we'd NEVER get a bathroom break. Well, see ya later!" He got up and started to leave.

"Um, that's not what..." Impa began.

"Think of it this way: do we WANT to stop him?"

"Point taken."

"So what's P, then?"

"Um, you know when you get that weird feeling in your crotch?"

The sound of people smacking their palms to their foreheads echoed like an earthquake.

"The LETTER P," Malon clarified.

"Peca..." began Saria.

"NO…no…no, that's quite all right, we covered that already," said Ruto.

"What then?"

"We could do pots, but that's pretty much the same as jugs," remarked Zelda.

"How about peanut butter?"

"Peanut butter?"

"PEANUT BUTTER?" shrieked Rauru, a piece of toilet paper stuck to his heel, leaping from offstage and smashing into the center of the group like a mortar shell.

"AAAAAAAAH!"

"There's no bloody peanut butter! That was just a suggestion!"

"Oh. In that case, I suggest falafel."

"No, a suggestion for the letter P."

"Oh. Let me think." Rauru thought. And thought. "Okay, I suggest falafel."

"Never mind."

"So what about peanut butter, then?" asked Saria.

"WELL, HE LOVES PEANUT BUTTER," expostulated the Skull Kid.

"Who doesn't?" asked Darunia. "What specifically about peanut butter?"

"And DON'T say that he bathes in it, or shoves it up his nasal passages, or derives erotic stimulation from it, or anything else!" said Zelda pointedly at Saria.

"Okay, I won't. But he does like peanut butter. Like, this one time, he was out of pecans, so he took a jar of peanut butter and..."

"I SAID DON'T! DOOOOOOOOOON'T!"

"Let's just move on."

**Q IS FOR…**

"Oh, HELL no," said Darunia.

"What are we supposed to say for THAT?"

"Howzabout quixotic?"

"Quwawha?"

"It's like, being on a quest. Like Don Quixote."

"The senile windmill guy?"

"Yeah, him."

"So you're saying Link is a delusional, windmill-smiting Spaniard?"

"No, quixotic has to do with being on a quest. Like, he fights for noble truth and chivalry, but it's all for naught. 'Cuz he's fighting windmills. You know."

"He went on a noble quest that, unfortunately, seems to have broken his brain."

"Yeah, sounds about right."

"I guess that wraps it up."

Darunia smiled. "Wow, this letter was surprisingly easy."

**R IS FOR...**

"Ri-gosh-darn-diculous," said Malon.

"Yeah, it is, but at least we get paid for it," said Nabooru. "It...OOOOOOH! That's what you meant. Gotcha."

"What's so ridiculous about Link?"

"Dude, have you been paying NO attention this WHOLE TIME?"

"Yeah, but I'd say what we've been discussing about Link was more...disturbing than ridiculous."

"Let's try something else."

"Raging 'roids?"

"Steroids? Link uses steroids?"

"No, hemorrhoids."

"WHOA too much information there," said Saria, thoroughly disgusted.

"How about racquetball?"

"Really?"

"No, racquetball."

"I mean, what about racquetball?"

"He plays racquetball. He's, like, a major racquetball buff."

"He's one of those obnoxious racquetball people, who wear the dorky headbands and finger gloves, and goggles."

"Interesting, but we need something better. Something noteworthy."

"Well, I was playing racquetball with him, one time," said Zelda. "He hit the little blue ball, and was making this little smirk. He was all like, 'You think you can take me? Huh? I'm about to bring the pain. You're going to know the fury of my racquet wrath.'"

"God, what a dork," said Malon ruefully.

"Anyway, he hit it and then he turned to me, smirking, to watch me hit the return, and he didn't realize that the ball was just coming right back at him. So it hit him square in the crotch."

"OW! MAN!" Everyone scrunched up.

"Yeah. It was pretty damn funny, because it was so perfectly timed. I mean, it was just, 'You'll never defeat my racquetball prowess! I am your MASTER! I'm da MA-WHUMP!'"

"That scene will live in my mind forever, Zelda. Thanks a million."

**S IS FOR...**

"Soul sistahz," said Malon.

"Pardon my what the fuff, but what the fuff."

"Just saying the first thing that comes to mind."

"The very fact that THAT is the first thing that came to your mind is...just...what the fuff."

"Okay, anyway."

"Anyway. Wait! I got it. He's always talking about...about something..."

"Something! That's it!"

"No, retard. He always is giving his stream-of-consciousness monologue about...SUPERBALLS!"

"Superballs?"

"Aww, man, we just had a ball-related item on the list."

"But we can never get enough balls, can we?"

AWK-ward!

"So anyway, what about Superballs?"

"Superballs. Those little rubber balls that bounce with like twice the force you apply to them. He loves them. Loves them like brothers."

"Huh."

"Just think about it. They're small, they move fast, they're hyperactive, and they can cause serious injury and property damage. What WOULDN'T he love about them?"

"Nothing, I guess."

"Let's go to the tape for a moment here."

We cut to Link, in his bathrobe, smoking a bubble pipe. "Okay, dude. Okay. Seriously. Okay. Dude. Okay, so like one time, I had this Superball, right? And it was like, turquoise, with this pimp white marble swirly crap? And it, like, bounced a hundred feet when you dropped it. So like, I took it, and I like, put it in a slingshot, and I shot it at the floor, and I couldn't, you know, really follow it because it was moving faster than the naked eye can detect, but I think what happened was it hit the floor, then the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling again, and then the wall, and then this photo which got smashed into like a million pieces, and then it like hit the microwave right on the little button you know that pops open the microwave door? And like the door opened and it made this little bell noise that it makes when the microwave goes off you know like 'DING!' And then it like hit the hanging lamp and it made this flash and a puff of smoke 'cuz I think it like shorted the contact, and it was all black, and then it hit the chair and knocked it over, and then it broke a window. It only lasted like three seconds, but it was like, transcendent, man. It was like making the little noise it makes when it hits stuff only it was going like a hundred miles per hour and it sounded like a jackhammer, 'DOWNGDOWNGDOWNGDOWNGDOWNGDOWNGDOWNG," and it like, blew my mind. I'll never forget it. It changed my life."

We return to the Zelda character panel, quietly shaking their heads in mute stupefaction.

"My God, what a freakish waste of carbon he is."

**T IS FOR...**

"Turtles."

"Huh?"

"Turtles. Lots of 'em. Big ones, small ones, aquatic or terrestrial, hinged-shell or fixed. And then off in the background there was this sitar twanging, and every now and then one of them would break off and chop off a chunk from this huge brick of hash."

"And...WHAT does this have to do with ANYTHING?"

"Nothing. I was just describing this totally awesome Kappa Phi Kappa party this one time."

"Please, please tell me I didn't hear you say that."

"Oh, oh, oh, I have a way to turn that disturbing non-sequitur into a relevant remark."

"Fire at will."

"Turtle...necks."

"Oh, now we're getting somewhere."

"Really?"

"No. What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's about Link, right? Well, he likes turtlenecks. Come late fall, that's all he wears."

"Elaborate."

"They're green, of course. And every single one he owns looks exactly like his normal tunic. So you really can't tell he's wearing one."

"Then...how do you KNOW he always wears turtlenecks?"

"Well, he won't SHUT UP about them, for one thing. It's ON and ON about turtlenecks THIS and turtlenecks THAT...how they insulate the neck, where we all-too-often lose vital body heat...all these statistics about heat retention and customer satisfaction, how it totally knocks the scarf industry on its ass. It drives everyone crazy, but, you know, he is the Hero of Time, and we gotta respect that. He deserves to be a little obsessed with turtlenecks or jug-smashing or whatnot, after what he went through."

"That's not necessarily true. Just because he went on a magic quest doesn't give him free license to creep people out with his bizarre psychoses."

"Oh well."

**U IS FOR...**

"OH!" Skull Kid piped up. "I KNOW THIS ONE! EVERYONE KNOWS THIS ONE!"

"I don't."

"HAH! YOU'RE NOT EVERYONE!"

"Uh, yeah. You got me there."

"SO ANYWAY. U IS FOR...UKULELE!"

"Ukuwhatwhat?"

"UKULELE! THE STRINGED INSTRUMENT OF THE TROPICS!"

"The little teeny guitar things?"

"YEAH, I GUESS YOU COULD SAY THAT."

"What about Link and ukuleles?" asked Malon, adding, "She said as if she wanted to know."

"GEEZ, DON'T YOU PEOPLE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING? LINK IS A CONSUMMATE UKULELE...ER!"

"Ukuleler?"

"Ukulelist?"

"Ukulologist?"

"Ukulostomizer?"

"U all can shut up now?"

"A hahahahaha, I bellow with mirth."

"So he plays the ukulele? A lot?"

"NON-STOP! I MEAN, MAN DOES IT GET ANNOYING! BUT HE SAYS IT SOOTHES HIM, SO I GUESS IT'S COOL."

"Yeah, the last thing we need is Link, more agitated than usual."

**V IS FOR…**

"Dodge…VIPER!" shouted Zelda.

"What about it?"

"Great car. I want one."

"You already have one. Three, actually."

"Oh."

"How about the vile, vicious villain whom he valiantly vanquished?" suggested Malon.

"Nyessss?" said Ganondorf.

"Okay. Were we goin' with that?"

"His vast, vain, voluminous visage is very, very...vad!"

"Vad?"

"I ran out of steam."

"Okay. Great."

"Is there a point to all this?" wondered Nabooru.

"Well, no. Not really," answered Malon.

"So what is V for?"

"Well, he dated the valedictorian in college," said Impa.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"He went to college, I mean?"

"Yes, believe it or not," said Impa.

"What was his major?"

"Sociology."

"Whoa. Seriously? Did he write a thesis?"

"Yeah, 'Pancakes and Thou: An Investigation into the Psychosocial Role of Griddle-Fried Batter Confections in the Development and Maintenance of Human Sociopolitical Consciousness,'" recalled Impa.

"So anyway, what about the valedictorian?" asked Nabooru.

"He just dated her for a few weeks. Never went anywhere."

"What did she SEE in him?"

"Y'know, pores, hair, nostrils, eyelids, that sort of stuff."

"No no no, personality-wise."

"Oh. In that respect, nothing. More of a boy-toy, just a trophy boyfriend, really. She took him around the school and put him on display."

"What ever happened?"

"Well, she went on to be a theoretical physicist, and...he was voted 'Most Likely to Get Foreign Object Stuck In Nasal Passages.' And believe me, he lived up to expectations. Repeatedly." Impa shook her head.

"How do YOU know all this?" asked Ruto.

"I tutored him in English. It wasn't pretty. His book report on 'A Tail of Two Zippies' was what pushed me over the edge."

"Let's move on."

**W IS FOR…**

"Probably world-saving," said Nabooru.

"Yeah, I guess."

"What else, though?"

"Well, women, but that's pretty much the same as girls."

"I'd say weed," said Saria.

"Heh. How so?"

"Well, Link's no pothead, but he did get high once."

"Zesty!" said Impa. "Tell us."

"He was out in the yard with his Weed Whacker, whacking weeds, and he remembered a rumor that some young Kokiri punks told him about 'weed'. So he took the weeds he had whacked, rolled them into a blunt, and smoked it."

"So basically you're saying that he got whacked out on the weed he whacked with his Weed Whacker?" asked Darunia.

"Umm, yeah, I guess you could say that…" said Saria.

"Oh ho, but the real challenge is to say it ten times fast! Ahem! HewaswhackedoutontheweedhewhackedwithhisWeedWhackerhewaswhackedoutonweedhe…weeded…out…with his Whack Weeder…and…see? It's hard!"

"Scintillating," said Zelda.

"Anyway, he rolled and smoked his lawn clippings," said Saria.

"Did it work?"

"Yes and no. I think he got high, but it was probably just hyperventilation."

"Ah."

"He was puffing like a freight train just to keep it lit. So he probably was just woozy from oxygen deprivation."

"Still, good story."

"Yeah. That was his only time on 'weed.'"

There was a tidy pause.

"Amphetamines, though. WHOA!"

**X IS FOR…**

"Whoa, that's hard."

"X. Maybe for 'xylophone?'"

"Um, okay, why?"

"No idea. Just throwing that out there."

"Well, let's thing of another word with X," said Ruto, hopefully.

No one said anything.

"Annnnnything at all," said Ruto.

Silence continued.

"Aaaaabsolutely anything. Any word that begins with the letter X."

Only breathing answered her entreaties.

"How about x…pectorations?" suggested Darunia.

"Expectorations? You suggest this…why again?"

"OH! OH! I KNOW! I KNOW! TIME FOR ANOTHER STORY!" said the Skull Kid.

"Oh, boy, here we go…"

"OKAY. REMEMBER WHEN I SAID LINK HATES CATS?"

"Yes."

"OKAY, THE REASON HE HATES CATS IS DUE TO THIS TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE INVOLVING CAT EXPECTORATIONS!"

"Come again?"

"CAT EXPECTORATIONS, WOMAN! ONE TIME, WHEN LINK WAS ABOUT THREE YEARS OLD, THERE WAS THIS CAT, RIGHT? AND HE LOVED THE CAT, AND PLAYED WITH IT, AND RODE AROUND ON IT, AND USED IT AS A PILLOW, AND MADE CLOTHES OUT OF ITS FUR, AND ALL KINDS OF CRAZY CRAP. BUT THEN ONE DAY, WHEN LINK WAS LEAST EXPECTING IT, THE CAT HOCKED UP A MONSTER HAIRBALL ALL OVER HIM! AND HE CRIED AND CRIED AND CRIED AND THE CAT RAN AWAY! AND SO, EVER SINCE THAT DAY, HE'S HAD A DEEP-SEATED, FREUDIAN PHOBIA OF CATS!"

There was an appreciative pause.

"Skull Kid," said Malon, "Remind me to never listen to you, ever."

"OKAY," Skull Kid replied, "BUT YOU WON'T LISTEN TO MY REMINDER WHEN I DO."

"True," said Malon.

"You know, that same cat thing happened to me," said Ganondorf. "Maybe that's why I'm so evil."

"Everything is six degrees away from cat expectorations, I guess," said Saria.

"And so, once again, a small part of my soul withers and dies," said Zelda sadly.

**Y IS FOR…**

"Let's think of a word for Y," said Malon.

"Y…" wondered Ruto aloud.

"Because we have to," said Malon.

"No, Y."

"Because we're supposed to! That's what we're here to do!"

"What?"

"We're supposed to be taking each letter and finding a word for it."

"I know! Y!"

"Because that's what they TOLD us to do!"

"Yes, I know they told us to do this! So Y!"

"BECAUSE!"

"NOT THIS AGAIN!" screamed everyone.

"What?" asked Darunia.

"He's on second," said Nabooru.

"To get us back on track, Y is for yummers," said Take a Wild Guess.

"Hey! Who the hell are you?" asked Rauru.

"I'm Take a Wild Guess," said Take a Wild Guess. "Or TAWG for short."

"Okay…"

"Yo, wut up, Tawg? Wurd," said Darunia.

"You have no idea how tired of that I am," said Take a Wild Guess.

"Sup mah homies! Snoop Tawggy Tawg!" went on Darunia.

"Shut up, please. I beg of you."

"Beware of tawg! It's a tawg-eat-tawg w…"

"THAT'S IT! I'M OUT OF HERE!" said Take a Wild Guess, disappearing as quickly as he had arrived.

There was a ong-lay ause-pay.

"Huh. That was weird."

"A personification of a phrase…nothing new," said Rauru.

"Umm…what?"

"Oh, Don't Have a Cow," said Rauru. "Who, by the way, is right over there."

DHAC waved.

"Let's stop before it gets even weirder," said Nabooru, the voice of sanity.

"Indeed."

"Y is for…how about yodeling?" said Zelda.

"Yodeling? What the fuff?" asked Impa.

"Don't you know anything? Link yodels like all get out!"

Need I say that there was a long pause?

"I mean, honestly, you don't know that? Geez, who selected YOU for this panel?"

"How the hell could anyone know that Link yodels?"

"Have you HEARD him?"

"No…"

"How could you NOT?"

"How'd he get into yodeling, anyway?"

Darunia shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Everyone immediately looked at him.

"Well, you see, this one time, he came over to my place, for a few drinks, and, you know, nothing serious, just a couple of guys...havin' a few drinks...in a cave..."

Everyone just kept staring and staring at him.

"And we, you know, tossed back a few, and, you know, I got to talking...about yodeling...and, you know...just...like...we thought maybe we'd try it out..."

They just stared.

"You know..."

"Darunia, thank you for releasing yet another unspeakable evil on a weary world."

**Z IS FOR…**

"Umm, let's say ZELDA?" said Zelda.

"ZELDA!" shouted Darunia. "Hee hee hee! You're right, that WAS fun!"

"No, you idiot, I'm saying Zelda should be the word for Z."

"Oh. Can we say 'Zelda' anyway?" asked Darunia, hurt.

"Why?" Zelda wanted to know.

"Listen, Zelda, you don't have to say your own name very much, so you wouldn't know, but let me tell you, Zelda, that saying your name, which is Zelda, is the most fun activity that anyone, including you, Zelda, could ever hope to do."

"You're on crack."

"No, seriously! It's true!" insisted Darunia. "Saying the word 'Zelda', Zelda, is really, really fun, Zelda! You, Zelda, should try saying the word 'Zelda' because saying the word 'Zelda', which is your name, Zelda, would bring you, Zelda, lots of…"

"STOP SAYING ZELDA!" yelled Zelda.

"See? Wasn't that fun?"

"NO! SAYING MY OWN NAME WAS NOT AT…all…wait…actually…" Zelda muttered. "Zelda. WHOA! Zelda! Zelda Zelda Zelda Zelda! Hee hee hee! You're right! My name is the coolest!" Zelda giggled like a schoolgirl.

"I TOLD you!" Darunia answered.

"Um, if I may interrupt…" Saria attempted.

"NO YOU MAY NOT!" shouted Zelda. "Zelda Zelda Zelda Zelda Zelda Zelda Zelda…"

"Whatev," said Impa.

"I THINK Z IS FOR ZEITGEIST," said Skull Kid.

"Whaaaaa?"

"Y'KNOW, ZEITGEIST. THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. THE STATUS QUO. THE ESPIRIT DU CORPS. THE JE NE SAIS QUOI. THE C'EST LA VIE. THE HORS D'OUVRES. THE FROMAGE DE LA PARAPLUIE."

"HORS D'OUVRES?" shrieked Rauru.

"That was predictable."

"THE SCHADENFROID, THE STURM UND TANG, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, THE IPSO FACTO, THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, THE BELLE OF THE BALL..."

"Stop spouting random phrases in foreign languages!"

"OH. RIGHT."

"Does zeitgeist have anything whatsoever to do with Link?"

"WELL, SURE! I MEAN, HE'S…LIKE…YOU KNOW…THE TIMES…AND…STUFF…"

"Oh, forget it. We've been here for hours. Let's go home."

"Yep. And that's the alphabet."

Next time on A2Z: Zelda Style!...

It's Zelda! Titular princess! Total ho-bag! And so much more!


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